Brown Toast: Election fun from across the pond...

British PM Gordon Brown's campaign imploded this week, thanks first to a live mic and then due to his reaction caught on cam when the BBC played back what he was recorded saying.

British tabs are having a well-deserved field day.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/

Edit:

His reaction when sandbagged by the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/election_2010/8649200.stm

 

One should clarify that Brown's campaign wasn't exactly a 30-story luxury hotel to begin with, but rather more of a wobbling beach shack long since abandoned to drifters and surf bums.

At least the damn thing's over next week. Month-long campaigns are way better than two-year ones.

 

This is reason No. 3,232,327 why I hate politicians.
Poor dude runs into some whack job while campaigning, makes an offhanded comment about said whack job, gets called on it --- and instead of manning up and saying 'Yes, I said it, 'cause I think it's true" He back tracks and apologizes.
He's already third in the polls, why not stand behind your remark and show some fucking spine, instead of apologizing (for something you prolly aren't really sorry for anyway) and then going back to meet the women for tea and crumpets and listen to her berate you for a half hour while you grovel.
For Fucks sake man!


Rant Over.

 

Care to give a quick recap or the three contenders?

Also, I'm a bit confused. I always thought that, with a Parliamentary system, the Prime Minister is the leader of the majority party in Parliament. Analogous in a sense to our Speaker of the House.

So, how does a direct election work?

Is it that the person elected gets the first crack at putting together a governing coalition?

If so, how is that binding? Couldn't the coalition break apart at any time? What if he can't put together a coalition?

 

There is no direct vote. The only people who vote for the party leaders are the voters in their own constituencies. Normally, one party wins a majority of seats and that party takes power. This time, that's unlikely.

Labour: In power since 1997, when they swept in as "New Labour," basically Conservatives-lite. Gordon Brown hasn't actually won an election because he came to power in 2007, when Tony Blair stepped down. In serious, serious trouble. No one likes Brown. Brown doesn't even like Brown. But people remember what happened the last time the Conservatives were in power.

Conservatives: Are they really different? Or are they the same old Tories in disguise? The leader is David Cameron, who's basically just Tony Blair with a posher accent. But people remember the Thatcher era, and most don't remember it fondly. The Tories have expected to coast into power for at least two years, and until about two weeks ago, they would have done.

Liberal Democrats: But these guys messed it all up. Typically a third party, they won a major victory when they got their leader, Nick Clegg, into the prime ministerial debates. He has the misfortune of being a rather posh, 6-foot-tall, 40-something white guy, just like Cameron, but he's made a killing by not being the other two guys. The trouble they have is that their votes are very spread out -- they tend to come second in a lot of constituencies, which is not a good thing in a first-past-the-post system.

The system still heavily, heavily favors Labour, and the Tories essentially have to win 6-7% more of the vote to get a majority. The odds are they'll get the most votes by several percentage points, get the most seats by a relatively wide margin but not have a majority. That will leave the Lib Dems as kingmakers, despite the fact they'll only have about 100 (out of 650) seats. Their priority in deciding who to form a coalition with will be the party most committed to electoral reform, which the Tories oddly aren't in favor of.

No one automatically gets first crack at putting together a coalition. Theoretically, any of them can go to the Queen and ask to be PM. (They earn that right by getting a majority of MPs to vote for their version of the Queen's speech, in effect the government's agenda for the year.)

In reality, they'll decide who the winner is first, to keep the Queen out of anything political. Brown will have the advantage because he is already PM.

 

The third and final debate is on now, btw. You can watch it on the BBC website.

 

To be fair, I've been following this somewhat on BBC America and the woman did not appear to be that much of a whack job. She simply asked a question about illegal immigrants and what Brown was going to do for jobs. (not unlike what is going on here.) From all accounts Brown finished a distant third in the first Prime Ministerial Debate. Thing going for him is that this debate is focused on the economy (which is supposedly his strong suit)

 

This was always my biggest complaint about Clinton as president. He would dissemble and lie when the truth wouldn't have hurt him substantially.

Take, "I smoked pot, but I didn't inhale." What? It was 1969, you were smoking dope like everybody else on campus, but you didn't inhale? Dude, you weren't doing it right.

Or, "I didn't have sex with that woman." Huh? She gave you a blow job in the Oval Office and has the stains on the dress to prove it, but you didn't have sex? Uh, no.

And the maddening thing about him was that he had enough aw-shucks charm that he could have come clean, people would have fussed a little bit and it would have blown over in a week. Instead, because he refused to just be honest, it all blew up into a quasi-constitutional crisis and seriously derailed what could have been a very good presidency (and that's coming from someone who didn't vote for him either time).

 

I wonder if I admitted TO having "sex with that woman" if that truth would have substantially have hurt my relationship with my wife.

 

Comparatively speaking, the Conservatives in the UK would still be center or a tad left of center, using our own political spectrum.

 

Any word on how the Silly Party is doing?

 

Their vote's been split by the presence of a Slightly Silly Party candidate.

As for the Conservatives, F_B, you're kind of right, but only because political necessity forces them to be that way. One suspects that if they had their druthers, they'd swing quite a bit further to the right than they typically do, especially on issues like gay rights and the NHS -- which they have to support but probably would rather not. The fact that they dropped out of the main European Parliament conservative alliance and joined up with a ragtag bunch of nutters only reinforces that theory.

There's also the fact that you have hard-right small parties that give people with those viewpoints an outlet.

On a slightly related subject, Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem leader, is an atheist. Try finding one of those in American politics.